Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-07-30
Foreign Railroad d Notes.
THE PROBLEM IN RUSSIA.

change of policy. Construction and
management were now to be private,
and the State was to guarantee
interest on securities. In 1880
the evils of this system had
proved such that the State resumed
the building Of new lines, and bought
out three of the existing private roads.
The present state of things calls out
great complaint from the press, and
has given occasion for various special
treatises. The most recent of these,
on Russian Railroads and their Weak
Points," by Engineer Dobrynin, for
merly state inspector of railroads,
gives most discouraging picture.
ihe state outlay for private roads, in
Gliding 5b per cent. interest on tie
debt owed by these roads to the state,
is growing year by year. Mr.. Dobrynin
estimates that unless change of policy
is made by the most favorable calcula-
tions the outlay for the year 1890 will
be $11O, O,SS6,000, and the whole debt
at that time will reach the enormous
sum of 81 ,407 ,313, 900, and by the
year 1900 it will be $2,913,510 900.
The cause for this state of things he
finds in the system of chartering pri-
vate companies. The mischievous
scheme of guaranteeing interest re-
lieves the companies of all immediate
concern in building and managing eco
nomically. On the contrary it has been
to their interest to make the cost as
high as possible, to give greater room
for corruption. Consequently the roads
have been built always extravagantly,
and often too well for the needs Of the
traffic. When they were once in
operation the means for new construc-
ton and equipment was taken out of
earnings instead of being borrowed,
as by this means the company
incurred no new debt, and
the only result was a greater
deficiency of interest to be made up to
stock and bondholders by the state.
Against this latter form of overreach-
ing the state, the government inspec-
ton boards have proved no safeguard.
Their activity has been too much con-
fined to merely technical matters, and
to securing formal uprightness of
management. Like some other COM
missions, they have shown tendency
to exercise oversight in the sense Of
overlooking.
The writer asks for more thorough
State supervision, but this cannot be
realized without the change of many
statutes and provisions which now tie
the hands of the State. His other
remedies seem shortsighted and in
efficient. They consist of various petty
savings from lowering the weight of
locomotives and rails; an increased
use of wood in construction, in place
of iron and stone; a substitution of
mixed passenger and freight trains for
the present system, in which the two
are separated, and a consequent les
sening of the number of trains; gen.
eral lowering of speed, and the like.
There is a widespread feeling in ia
vor of state assumption OF the private
roads, but this is impracticable for two
reasons. The state has not the means
to buy the roads, and if it had, many
provisions in the charters would
stand in the way. On the whole, the
question in Russia is grave one, and
complicated by earlier imprudence.
1ifE tAiLtohbo ~ iooc'
According to official statistics lately
published, the Netherlands had 1885
miles of railroad in operation at the
end of the 1885, gain for the year of
81 miles. Less than one-third of this
was double tracked. The whole was
under the management of IA COM
panies, one of which controlled more
than half, and five all but a
small part of it. BY these five 49,
GAS 900 passengers were carried dur
ing the year, and 6,915,00O tons of
freight. The average passenger mile
age was 1917 miles; ton mileage, 10
miles. The rate for passengers was
sc. 016 per mile the same as in 1884,
ane the gross earnings from passengers
So ,419 900. or $4,000 less than in
1884. The rate per ton per mile for
freight was $0.0l22, or slightly
less than in 1884, and the earnings
were 4,196, ,000-a slight increase.
The gross earnings per mile, from
both passengers and freight, were
So, 6,S79-a loss, from 1884, of 5000.
Perhaps the most noticeable thing in
the statistics is that the passenger
traffic was considerably more than
half of the whole in value.
DEcADENCE IN PERU.
At the close of 1886, 7S5 miles of
railroad were reported in operation in
Peru. In 1878 the returns gave 1860
miles. The difference is largely due
to the war with Chill QS79-S3),
which caused great destruction, and
ended with the loss of certain lines by
cessions of the territory containing
them to Chilli.
Two roads, of 23 miles in all, are
private; the rest belong to the State.
The State, however, manages only one
short line, the Lima-Ancon; the rest
is let out, on various conditions, to
private parties.
The Peruvian roads consist, for the
most part, of ten lines from the coast
to the interior. The principal one,
313 miles long, extends from Mollendo
on the coast to Puno, on Lake
Titicaca, and thence northwest to
Santa Rosa. Some OF its grades are
in %, and at Puno it reaches an alti-
tude of about Is 900 feet. The next
in length, the Callao-Lima-San Mateo,
of "a miles, has grades as steep as the
first and reaches an altitude almost
as great. The extensions OF
both these lines, the former to
Cuzco and the latter to the rich
mining regions of Cerro de Pasco,
which had been begun, were inter-
rupted by the war with Chill and
have not been resumed.
RAILROADING IN PARAGUAY.
The Republic of Paraguay is not
agitated over railroad pool. Its sim
Gle line is forty-three miles long, ex-
tending from the capital, Asuncion,
southeast of Paraguay. This road,
whose gauge is four feet, three and
one-fifth inches, and steepest grade